AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS IN INDIA AND PAKISTAN 13

valueless unless they cultivated it; it had no market price for no one
would buy it or make advances upon it as security,"18 Now land
was made transferable by law; moreover, in sharp contrast to
pre-British times, legal machinery in the form of civil courts of
law was created to enforce such transfers.19 All this increased the
value of land as a security for monetary advances.

Besides the heavy and rigid revenue demands of the govern-
ment, uncertainty of crops caused by natural calamities added
to the farmers* needs for borrowing. Within a period of a hundred
and thirty years of British rule in India, there were twenty-two
officially declared famines, or one every six years;20 of the "un-
official" famines and scarcities, there is no count.

By this time, another important factor added to the farmers*
troubles. With the increase in cash crops, regional specialization
and the development of grain market in the countryside, the culti-
vator entered "the orbit of world prices";21 thus, to the uncertainties
of nature, for which he could at least pray to heaven or blame his
past misdeeds, were added the uncertainties of world prices.

Aided by the unholy trinity—heavy cash revenue demands,
famines and world price fluctuations—the money lenders, former
"humble servants and accountants" now turned into what Max
Weber called "virtuosos in unscrupulous profiteering", began to
play a dominating role in the agrarian society.

As a result, as the Indian Famine Commission of 1901, under
the able chairmanship of A. P. McDonnell, pointed out, while the
government did nothing:22

...the cultivators sank deeper into debt and their property began
to pass out of their hands.. It must be admitted that the condi-
tions on which, under the revenue system, the, cultivators held^ their
lands, helped to bring this result about. The rigidity of the revenue
system forced them into^ debt, while the valuable property

18 Report of the Royal Commission oh Agriculture, p. 9 ; Choksey, R* D.,
Economic History of the Bombay', Deccan and Karnatak, (Poona, 1945), p.
187 ; Baden-Powell, The Indian Village Community, p. 424.

19 Choksey, Ibid., p. 187 ; Thorburn, op. cit., pp. 58f.

20 Dutt, R. C, Famines and Land Assessments in India, (London, 1900),
p.l.

21 Anstey, Vera, Modem India and the West, (London, 1941), p. 290.

22 Report of the Indian Famine Commission .(1901), p. 107.